Ity Bytes

So this is where I am right now.

The work I want to do, is easy and fun for me to do. It’s not impossible work for me to do. And still I’m scared. Scared I’ll talk too much. Scared I’ll be rejected.

And you know what,  I will be so rejected. So will you. It’s a valid fear and yet it’s not a rejection that will kill us, or even harm us. It’s a person saying no to what they believe we are offering them for whatever reason they have, which has very little to do, if anything at all, with us.

Maybe we caught them on a bad day. Maybe just before we called, they had to fire or layoff an employee or maybe they themselves were just laid off or fired. Maybe they’ve been getting phone calls from other people with “sales speels” all day.

Maybe they had a fight with their spouse or their kids or their parents. Maybe they are considering closing their business because of their own fears and their financial realities and they responded with a no because they don’t believe anything will help.

Maybe they said no because they have all the customers and clients they can handle and have no time to implement, learn about or even consider new ideas.

Maybe they said no because what they already do works so well.

I don’t know why they’ll say no. I know they will. I also know if you and I just keep showing up, someone, somewhere will say yes.

And when they say yes will you ask yourself, because I’m going to ask myself,  when that yes happens, were all those nos worth this yes?

And I hope I’ll answer myself, with Yes, oh my yes, all those nos, they were completely worth it.

And if that answer is something else other than a Yes, oh my yes, what does that tell me?

I can’t answer either of those questions and yet that answer I believe is what the fear, the scared is counting on. As long as I take no action, the “I’m scared” feeling will remain safe.

So the question I pose to myself in the face of hearing me say, “I’m scared” is, do I want to remain safely tucked in bed with the part of me that says, “I’m scared” or do I acknowledge the feeling, thank it for trying to keep the status quo, as the status quo, give myself some kindness and then jump anyway?

My head is telling me yes. My heart is telling me yes. MY body, my body is telling me no-no-no-no.

Since my heart overrules my body, I jump scared.

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This applies to EVERYTHING and ANYTHING we feel pulled to achieve whether it’s build a new business, find our soul mate, change jobs or careers, get our book published or have that hard conversation with a loved one.

As long as we keep showing up, and stay, we will finish. Trust the finish. Even when priorities and desires change, when we get new information which precipitates those changes, we will still finish but only if we start.

Jump scared. Keep jumping.

Give yourself an A+ if you already know what the internet marketing terms blow mean and can spot them in the marketing you’re insisting on exposing yourself to every day.

If you don’t know them all, fret not, just pay careful attention, especially if:

1. You’re completely and totally new to the provider side of the consumer/provider pond and…
2. You’re buying products teaching you how to make money or start a business or work from home using the internet.
3. You only pretend you know what they mean so you look knowledgeable around the other people also pretending to know what they mean.
4. You are trying to figure out how to make some money using the internet and you’re afraid of asking because then no one will ever buy anything from you EVER because you had to ask.
5. Any number of other reasons.

I’ll turn it over to Marlon now.

Memo From: Marlon Sanders
Memo To: LaShae
Re: Key Internet marketing terms & vocabulary

Hello,

Marlon here.

A lot of times Internet marketers throw terms around and assume everyone knows what they mean.

To help you out, I’m providing a list here written in layman’s terms. Some of these aren’t the “precise” technical definition. But they’re what I call working definitions that are easy to understand.

KEY TERMS AND VOCABULARY

Continuity: This means something that people are charged for regularly, typically monthly or quarterly. In the biz, we call this “continuity income” or recurring billing. Newsletters are usually paid for monthly as are membership sites. The reason you see a lot of emphasis on continuity offers is it provides steady income and gives you a way to pay your bills. The classic example is the book club of the month programs.

Forced Continuity: Forced means you don’t have a choice.  The way this works is when you buy one product, you’re given a free trial of a newsletter, membership site or CD of the month club. The trial is usually 14 to 30 days. Sometimes as long as two months. At the end of that time
period, if you don’t cancel, you’re charged monthly for whatever it is.

Some marketers get people in continuity billing then NEVER send emails or communications hoping people will FORGET about the purchase and let the billing continue forever. I
find this to be legally risky. If you do forced continuity, make sure people know they’re being charged and can cancel without jumping through hoops.

Back End: The back end of the business is everything AFTER the initial sale. In other words, it’s the follow up business. In the ideal world, you break even or make a small profit on the initial sale (or what we call the “front end”.) And you make your profits on the upsells, downsells and subsequent sales. 

Upsells: Additional products or services offered at the point of the sale. As crazy as it sounds, the EASIEST time to make another sale to the customer is when they already have their credit card out! Any additional product offered is an upsell.

Downsell: If the upsell is declined, another offer for a lower price than the upsell is made. This is called a downsell.

Target market: A market is a group of people who are in the MARKET for a product or service. A target market is the market you’re targeting. For example, males online between the ages of 35 and 65 who want to start a home-based business would be a target market. Stated
differently, it’s the people who are the potential buyers of what you sell.

Sales letters: In this business, we often use very long sales letters similar to the direct mail letters you receive in the mail. We call these sales letters because they’re me-to-you letters that SELL something. These are different from a brochure, which is an impersonal communication. Sales letters are written as though you’re talking to the person directly. They’re more personal and persuasive.

Membership site: These are password protected sites that  have content delivered regularly and often have a forum or other way to interact with members.

Forum: These are places you go to talk to others who share a common interest.

Opt ins: When someone joins your email list, they “opt in” to receive emails from you.

Double opt in: When someone joins your email list, they receive an email asking them to click a confirmation link to PROVE they subscribed to the email list. This is an anti-spam feature and is now standard practice.

Autoresponder: This is a software program that lets you send email broadcasts to everyone on your list. It will also send a sequence of emails any number of days apart that you specify.

Shopping cart: The ordering mechanism you use to get people’s name, address and credit card or check info and process their order.

Affiliate program: A program where you promote a vendor’s product or service and receive a commission when there’s a sale. The classic example is Amazon.com. You can link to books on Amazon. And if a visitor to your web site buys one of them, you get a small commission.

Associate program: Same as affiliate program

Banner ads: Those square or horizontal ads on web sites.

Ebook: Basically the same as a printed book but delivered online, quite often as a PDF.

PDF: Portable Delivery Format. This is a uniform format for delivering digital information. A standard of method of delivering documents on the web.

White paper: A research paper or report delivered as a PDF.

Name Squeeze: A term trademarked by Jonathan Mizel. See Squeeze page.

Squeeze page: A page with only one purpose to obtain or “squeeze” a name and email address, or email address alone, from the web visitor.

Lead capture page: Same as a squeeze page.

Power Squeeze page: See squeeze page

Hits: Some stats programs measure web site traffic by hits. This is not a particularly accurate way to measure visitors.

Unique visitors: Stat programs attempt to identify actual visitors and eliminate duplicate visitors in a 24-hour period.

Cookies: The way things get tracked on the Internet. These are little text files put on your computer. They contain tidbits of information that allow stuff to be tracked. In the case of affiliate programs, the way we track sales and credit the correct reseller with the commissions is
through the use of cookies. The cookie simply contains that affiliate’s ID number.

PPC: Pay-per-click advertising. Google made PPC a dominant advertising method. As a ppc advertiser, you run ads on Google and ONLY pay when someone clicks on your ad.

Monetize: When you find a way to make money with something, you monetize it. So you’ll hear people talk about monetizing their traffic. All their talking about is finding a way to make money off of their web site visitors.

Traffic: Visitors to your web site or web page are traffic.

Product launch: When a number of affiliates promote one product o one day or one week. Typically last for one or two weeks and often involve heavy promotions by affiliates who are trying to win cash and prizes.

AWeber: One of the main autoresponder services.

One Shopping Cart: Another autoresponder service that also contains a shopping cart, ad tracker, affiliate software and other bells and whistles.

Ad tracker: A program that lets you create links that track when people click on them and then also count actions or sales that follow the click.

Affiliate software: Software that allows you to run your own affiliate program and pay affiliates commissions when they sell your product or service.

Clickbank: A marketplace for ebooks sold by affiliates.

This list by Marlon Sanders from MarlonSanders.com. You have permission to re-publish this list as long as you leave this part in tact.

Visit Marlon’s blog at: http://www.marlonsnews.com

Nope, you won’t make money overnight, even by knowing all these terms. You can however begin to spot when their being used and possibly begin to use them for your purposes as well.

Keep chewing,

LaShae

Welcome to the ItyBytes week long, intuitively guided party. You’ll notice the walls are bare. Consider it a clean slate for what is to come.

You may be fighting a mental battle regarding doing anything online. If you are, it’s difficult to take any consistent sustained actions.

You may also be flitting from one make money guide to another and spending way more than necessary to get started building a business.

STOP!

No, seriously stop and check in with yourself. Find the heart in what you want to share online. Make a firm and clear decision.  Start there and just don’t stop. The plan will form, grow, change and refine itself as you learn new information and gather experience and data.

You won’t be able to stop the forward movement.

Plus, your wallet, credit cards, heart and the people who’s lives are enhanced by your skills and talents, will thank you.

Not sure how to how to check in with your heart?

I wasn’t sure either until I stumbled on a 3 Chapter excerpt from Unveiling the Heart of Your Business by Mark Silver. The excerpt is called  Getting To The Core Of Your Business and does require you email address and your name. You won’t regret providing either.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll feel some initial resistance to doing the Find Your Jewel exercise. Honestly, I still can’t get through the entire thing, and each time I do it, I get a better, more clear answer and  get closer to my essence.

If you’re not sure what skills you offer, make a list of all the things you enjoy doing and then break the list down into the skill sets required to do those things.

It’s a guarantee those skill sets can be translated into an online business, either as a service and/or a product.

That’s all from me today.

I’ll see you tomorrow with another gift.

LaShae

On Friday I mentioned the fact that I purchased private label rights to an e-book. There are tons of people who don’t believe it’s proper to use other peoples words and pass them off as their own. Nor do I.

However, if you have a reputable source for information, one who can and does research, verify and organize information in a meaningful way, then why wouldn’t you use it, especially when it is offered for use?

Still you may not even know exactly what Private Label Rights are? Or what’s the best policy for using them? And yes, there are times when you should never use them.

Nicole Dean answers those questions and clears up any confusion below. (I go to the source whenever I can and she’s the source for some seriously well written articles.) Okay, I’ve babbled enough.

Nicole – over to you.

Recently, in an interview, I was asked “Is it ethical to use private label rights and ghostwritten articles?”

Let me step back a moment and explain… Private label rights (or PLR) articles and ghostwritten articles are used by web owners as a method of outsourcing some of their content.

• PLR articles are packages of articles that are pre-written and sold to more than one person. (We recommend this site for your PLR needs.)
• Ghostwritten articles are articles that are written by someone else just for you that you can put your name on and are not sold to anyone else.

In both cases, you are allowed to edit the content as much or as little as you’d like and use the articles on your website, blog, or in your newsletter.

So, back to the question. Is it ethical? My answer was, “usually, yes”.

If you’re using the articles and saying “written by me” without changing anything at all, it may bite you in the butt later, when someone else does the same thing. Does that make it unethical? Not really. It’s just not smart. Can you use the article as it is or edited slightly, without saying it was written by you? Of course!

Most PLR packs are written by ghostwriters. Ghostwriters are professional researchers and writers. If you purchase well-written, informative PLR or ghostwritten articles and share them with your readers, don’t you all benefit? Your readers benefit by getting great information. You benefit by saving time. Is it any different than hiring a graphic designer or webmaster? Not in my opinion. Heck, most politicians don’t write their own speeches. They leave that to people
who are professional speech writers.

Of course, you’d want to only use top-notch PLR articles and not “sell-out” just to pump out blog posts or web pages quicker. We recommend you research thoroughly before choosing any ghostwriter or PLR service.

Here’s what to look for in a PLR service so you don’t waste your money:

1. Make sure the articles are written well.
2. Make sure that you know what topics you’ll receive (instead of some grab-bag of articles).
3. Be sure that the people running the program have some experience in article writing themselves, so they know what they’re doing.

There’s no point in doing everything on your own, especially if you dislike writing. All successful business people outsource the tasks they are not good at or dislike. Check it out. It might take some pressure off you and allow you to spend more time with your kids. And, that’s definitely ethical.

Nicole Dean welcomes you to check out EasyPLR.com – where you’ll find high-quality PLR articles on niches sold in very limited quantities.

It’s Friday and a fine one it is. The birds are in rare form this morning I’m sitting here listening to a symphony of bird song with the coo of mourning doves as the base notes.

Click me if you just want the tutorial.

So I’ll swoop right in

“It would seem as we get clear on what we want, the hows, whats and whos show up in our faces, right where they’ve been all along.”

~ LaShae Dorsey~

I’ll warn you before you get too involved, this is one of those posts that links to a bunch of stuff.

In my google reader yesterday, there was a blog post from sufi healer, heart centered business founder, father of twins Mark Silver. (clicking his name will take you to his about page.)

I’m not certain how or why it showed up. For those who know what google reader does, you’re going, that’s totally expected, it’s supposed to show up, so what? Or you could even be thinking well, she obviously doesn’t know how the google reader technology works but that’s not what I’m talking about.

I read the blog post. I re-read the blog post. I clicked the link to comment on the blog post. Nothing. 404 Error Page. Huh. Now I’m confuzzled. The post was exactly what I needed, right when I needed it. And I wanted to thank Mark for writing it. So the part that makes no sense is that the blog post is nowhere on his blog or his archives or even his newsletter. Which means I can’t link to it to share it with you.

(EDIT: The post didn’t show up until June 16, 2009. How do I know that? Because now there is a link http://www.heartofbusiness.com/avoiding-www/ dated June 16, 2009. Weird, but not really weird.)

Completely makes me sad and curious. I love getting curious. So I started digging through his archives and man on man, it’s a vein of gold. Gold I tell ya. Okay I already knew this but still something from 2006 or 2007 is relevant today. I mean really it’s over two years old how could it be relevant, now. (Uh that was sarcasm.)

This vein of archival gold is deep. Check them out. I would link to everything I found, but you would need a few weeks and plus that’s not an ItyBite is it?

The actual part below is the “tutorial” which works on ANY blog, not just Mark’s Heart of Business Blog.

Just head to his blog http://www.heartofbusiness.com/blog/ .

Look for a search box – generally you’ll find them near the top of the page somewhere.

Type a word or a phrase into the box and hopefully you’ll find something helpful.

In the case of Heart of Business, I found plenty. Not all about business either. Seriously.

So far I’ve typed in ‘help’, ‘resonance’, ‘getting started’ and a few other terms and lets just say my weekend will be full of reading, then doing.

I especially liked this post I found for getting started http://www.heartofbusiness.com/visualizing-your-way-to-success-uh-no/

Which of the following topics would you like to know more about?

• blogging
• paypal
• autoresponders
• twitter or
• article marketing

Just let me know in the comments.

If the bytes too big, spit it out. Take a smaller one.

–

LaShae